The Empress
The Empress reclines within her throne of fan coral and a corallimorph cushion. To one side she grasps a staghorn coral staff, and on the other a sad dollar shield. Within her web rest many developing eggs. Around her is wrapped a domesticated moray eel. All along her mantle crawl commensal crustaceans and molluscs. Her pattern is complex and enigmatic, evoking radial hydrozoans or flowers.
Symbolism of The Empress
The Empress traditionally represents fundamental feminine power. Her expression is enigmatic and inscrutable, but confident; to reflect the sense of reserved and distant matriarchal power.
L’Imperatrice, Marseilles deck.
The Empress, Smith-Waite deck.
The Empress, Thoth deck.
The Empress, Golden Tarot deck by Kat Black
The design of this card draws from a few different decks. The Golden Tarot has a lot of animals to emphasize a kind of earth fertility, and I always want to incorporate more fauna into the art. The pattern on her skin is derived from the Smith-Waite version of the card, which portrays the Empress in a dress patterned with pomegranates or strawberries. That card also has lots of plants, and wheat in the foreground, which in the underwater environment I have interpreted as staghorn coral.
The Empress of Octopolis
Like The Alchemist this depiction of the Empress is a supernatural, idealized version of what the symbol might represent to a citizen of Octopolis.
So, I have surrounded the Empress of Octopolis with symbols of fertility and bounty, especially that of seeds, polyps, and eggs. Many animals make their homes within the abundant folds of the Great Mother. Even her mantle appears to be made of eggs or spores of some kind. In a very real sense she is the Coral Reef itself, an environment shielding an immense diversity of life from the harsh currents of the ocean.
You can see a very specific and rare nudibranch, a broken-back shrimp, anemone fish, cardinal fish, a coral crab, a turban snail, a chiton, and a moray eel. All of the animals depicted in this piece are animals I saw during a series of dives in Dauin, Dumaguete, Philippines, in 2025.
I specifically chose some animals that are single-species commensal animals: the crab and shrimp both live on specific species of coral for essentially their entire lives. Clownfish and cardinal fish have similar commensal relationships with anemones and hard coral-respectively.
Artistic Process
For this drawing I challenged myself not to use any multiply layers to create shadows on the subject. I wanted the complex patterns and colors of the octopus's skin to be a bit disorienting and blend in with the equally complex background, and thus blur the boundary between the mother and the Earth around her.
Reflections on The Empress
In a very real sense living beings are inseparable from the environment they are a part of. You may think that we humans are somehow independent from our environment, but it isn’t true: we’re still dependent on the Earth to provide everything that we understand to be a part of our daily existence. The Empress is a fundamental source of raw material and power, but she is ultimately imperious and impersonal. She demands worship and respect if one is to live peacefully within her.
